In this column, we provoke fresh thinking and round up some of the weird, wonderful, quirky, surprising – and shocking – stories out there
That’s just sick!
Want to gauge how intelligent a potential client or coach is? Tell them a sick joke or share with them a cartoon based on black humour and see if they like it.
Apparently appreciating jokes requires people to be mentally agile and, according to a study, those who most like cartoons based on black humour score higher on verbal and non-verbal IQ.
Researchers, led by Ulrike Willinger from the Medical University of Vienna asked 156 participants to rate their understanding and enjoyment of black humour cartoons from The Black Book by Uli Stein.
One cartoon depicted a confused man holding a public telephone, the voice coming from the phone saying: “Here is the answering machine of the self-help association for Alzheimer’s patients. If you still remember your topic, please speak after the tone.”
The participants also completed basic tests of their verbal and non-verbal IQ and answered questions about their mood, aggressive tendencies and educational background.
One group showed the highest sick humour appreciation and comprehension, and they also scored the highest on
verbal and non-verbal IQ, were better educated and scored lower for aggression and bad mood.
The research found no evidence grumpy, aggressive people enjoy sick or black humour.
The study, Cognitive and emotional demands of black humour processing: the role of intelligence, aggressiveness and mood, was published in Cognitive Processing in January.
Read more here: http://bit.ly/2kkPsgy
Creativity – it’s in the blood
Creativity appears to be largely hereditary, suggests research comparing identical to non-identical twins in the Netherlands.
Mark Roeling and his colleagues at Oxford and Vrije universities, drew on data from the Netherlands Twin Register, covering around 1,800 identical twins who share the same genes, and 1,600 non-identical twins with only 50% of their DNA in common, like non-twin siblings.
The register includes information on the twins’ professions, coded as artistic if within the categories of dance, film, music, theatre, visual arts or writing. This applied to 233 of the individuals on the register.
The team found that there was more similarity in the careers of identical twins than non-identical twins. If one identical twin had a creative career, there was a 0.68% chance that their sibling would do as well, compared with a probability of 0.4 for a creative non-identical twin.
This difference between identical and non-identical twins suggests that genes have a significant impact on whether people go into a creative profession, says the study, Heritability of working in a creative profession, published in Behavior Genetics.
Read more here: http://bit.ly/2jOUCyx
Mars vs Venus
Men want a quick fix and women want to talk about their feelings, according to a study.
Although the research was carried out among therapists, it may have implications for what coaching clients want too.
The study conducted by Portsmouth University’s Katie Holloway with colleagues including John Barry from University College London, was presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology in Liverpool.
Barry said that 80% of the therapists were reluctant to talk directly about gender differences in the needs of their clients, but treatment might be more effective if gender differences were taken into account more.
Read more here: http://bit.ly/2kahxW1
Driven to distraction
Those suffering from work-related stress are more likely to drive dangerously, according to research from the University of Haifa in Israel.
Researchers collecting data from 216 employees at a manufacturing organisation discovered that those who were experiencing psychological stress, either as a result of conflict between family life and the workplace or because of supervisor abuse, were more likely to drive dangerously.
The paper Make it to work (and back home) safely: the effect of psychological work stressors on employee behaviour while commuting by car was published in
The European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology.
Read more here: http://bit.ly/2kapN8j
- Contributions to this slot are welcome.
Email: liz@coaching-at-work.com